Bowstreet delivered a universal directory service language for the Internet to three key Internet standards bodies. This language, called Directory Services Markup Language (DSML), is supported by the collective efforts of IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, and the Sun-Netscape Alliance. By helping establish directories as the infrastructure for e-commerce applications, DSML enables easy sharing of valuable business data and processes within and across company boundaries. DSML will also accelerate the industry shift toward business-to-business applications built on Web services, modular units of software functionality located anywhere on the Internet. DSML and Web services will enable companies to develop dynamic e-commerce Web sites that can uniquely meet the needs of a company’s customers and business partners. The DSML 1.0 specification submission enables different vendors’ directory services to work together more easily by describing their contents – including data about people and computing resources – in XML. The announcement keeps the working group’s July 12 promise to reach consensus on a draft standard this year. The six companies turned over the DSML 1.0 specification draft to OASIS. In an effort to gain rapid and widespread acceptance, DSML 1.0 information is also being provided to the W3C and BizTalk. The DSML effort builds upon Bowstreet’s work over the past two years on the Bowstreet Web Automation Factory, a system for dynamically creating, managing, and linking mass-customized Web sites for B2B e-commerce. www.dsml.org, www.bowstreet.com
Category: Content technology news (Page 553 of 641)
Curated information technology news for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. News items are edited to remove hype, unhelpful jargon, iffy statements, and quotes, to create a short summary — mostly limited to 200 words — of the important facts with a link back to a useful source for more information. News items are published using the date of the original source here and in our weekly email newsletter.
We focus on product news, but also include selected company news such as mergers and acquisitions and meaningful partnerships. All news items are edited by one of our analysts under the NewsShark byline. See our Editorial Policy.
Note that we also publish news on X/Twitter. Follow us @gilbane
SoftQuad Software Inc. announced the release of XMetaL 1.2, a free upgrade for its advanced, yet easy-to-use, XML authoring solution. The upgrade increases XMetaL’s performance and productivity for users of all skill levels, and provides powerful new tools for publishing XMLdocuments to the Web. For content authors, XMetaL 1.2 includes a number of performance and productivity enhancements, including improved table handling, improved CSS rendering, improved spell checking and more intuitive editing functions. To help organizations produce Web-ready HTML from XML documents, XMetaL 1.2 includes a built-in XSL transformation engine. The engine is implemented as an XSLT COM object, which developers can access through scripts. Using XSL stylesheets, XML documents can easily be transformed to HTML for output to a browser or a file. In addition, developers can use the XSLT COM object for performing other complex document transformations on the fly, directly within XMetaL. Other improvements now found in XMetaL 1.2 give developers the ability to automate more processes to increase productivity when authoring XML documents. These include: Broader Event Trapping and Scriptable Entity Creation. XMetaL 1.2 is available December 10th as a downloadable upgrade for registered users of XMetaL 1.0. New users can purchase XMetaL 1.2 for $495.00 (U.S.) per single user license. www.softquad.com
SoftQuad Software Inc. announced the signing of five new XMetaL channel agreements – AGRA Systems Limited, American Computer Innovators Inc., Datalogics Inc., Movement, Inc. and Software AG – that add to SoftQuad’s network of over 70 VARs and OEMs in 13 countries. XMetaL has a familiar word processor-like environment, which makes it a broadly deployable solution that reduces training and implementation costs. XMetaL can increase performance, productivity and stability for users of all skill levels, while giving developers additional tools and functionality to create a more intuitive and integrated XML authoring environment. www.softquad.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced the availability of the Java API for XML Parsing Optional Package (“JAXP” ), and the formation of an expert group for the XML Data Binding project. The expert group for this project, which is going through the Java Community Process, consists of Allaire, Ariba, BEA/Web Logic, Bluestone Software, AOL/Netscape, Extensibility, Fujitsu, IBM, Object Design, Oracle, webMethods and Sun Microsystems. Sun’s announcement of the Java technologies for XML provides universal application logic that complements XML. The Java 2 platform and XML are complementary technologies that each have common features critical for Web-based applications, including platform-independence, industry standards, extensible, reusable, and global language support. Together, the Java 2 platform and XML will allow enterprises to simplify and lower the cost of information sharing and exchange in Web applications. The JAXP Optional Package allows developers to easily build Java-based applications enabled by XML for e-commerce, enterprise application integration, and web publishing. An optional package is a standard Java API that is not part of the Java Runtime Environment but can be optionally added depending on specific application needs. JAXP is now in early access release and available free-of-charge at http://java.sun.com/xml. The final version of JAXP is scheduled to ship in the first quarter of 2000. The JAXP optional package provides basic functionality for reading, manipulating, and generating XML documents through pure Java APIs. Seamlessly integrated with the Java 2 platform, JAXP provides a standard way for a Java platform-based application to plug in any XML-conformant parser. While the reference implementation uses Sun’s experimental high performing Java Project X as its default XML parser, the software’s pluggable architecture allows any XML- conformant parser to be used, such as the xml.apache.org XML parser, code named Xerces. (For information on this community project to which Sun donated technology visit www.apache.org) Sun also announced the expert group of industry leaders within the JCP that is working to create XML Data Binding software for the Java 2 platform. This project, code-named Project Adelard, will enable developers to deliver and maintain high-performance XML-enabled applications with a minimum of development effort. Project Adelard provides a two-way mapping between XML documents and Java-based objects along with a schema compiler tool. The compiler will automatically generate Java classes from XML schemas without requiring developers to write any complex parsing code. In addition, the compiler will contain automatic error and validity of checking of XML messages, helping to ensure that only valid, error-free messages are accepted and processed by a system. As with JAXP, Project Adelard is being developed through the JCP. Sun is working with the W3C XML Schema Group and other standards consortia, such as OASIS and XML.org. The specification and reference implementation for Project Adelard are under development by the expert group. Project Adelard will be available during the second quarter of 2000. www.sun.com
Personic Inc. announced its participation in the HR-XML Consortium. The HR-XML Consortium is a newly formed, independent, non-profit organization dedicated to the development and promotion of standardized, human-resources-related XML vocabularies for enabling e-commerce and the automation of inter-company exchanges of human resources data.Using industry-standard XML vocabularies, one company is able to transact with countless other companies without needing to design, engineer, and install a multitude of separate interchange mechanisms. As a member of the HR-XML Consortium, Personic is developing technology to enable its core recruiting and hiring software to use XML. Personic is incorporating this communications technology into its core applications. Personic also partners with other organizations within the HR-XML Consortium to derive HR-XML (Human Resources Extensible Markup Language) standards. The HR-XML language provides standard definitions of data elements needed for an application to perform standardized Human Resources transactions and communicate with other applications using HR-XML. Through the HR-XML Consortium, more than 20 software and services suppliers have already endorsed three XML schemas designed to enable a new generation of Web-based workforce management and recruiting services that are based on open, e-commerce models and deliver employers greater ROI for their staffing expenditures. This will give HR and staffing vendors new opportunities for growth and profit. With a common medium of exchange, customers need not expend extra energy maintaining and updating proprietary interfaces. They save on costs and can dramatically reduce integration/maintenance efforts. HR-XML standardization shortens time for everyone involved in the recruiting and hiring process. www.personic.com
The Graphic Communications Association announced the creation of the not-for-profit International Digital Enterprise Alliance (IDEAlliance). IDEAlliance will provide comprehensive support to working groups engaged in developing industry- specific applications of both vertical and cross-industry open information standards. Current member groups of the IDEAlliance include: the Information and Content Exchange (ICE), which establishes standards for the syndication and aggregation of information across industries; the Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata (PRISM), which is developing a standard XML metadata vocabulary for the publishing industry; the Customer Profile Exchange Network, a vendor-neutral open standard for the privacy-enabled exchange of customer profile information across disparate systems and applications; and the Independent Consultants Cooperative (ICC), an organization of XML/SGML consultants. Like its predecessor, the Graphic Communications Association Research Institute, IDEAlliance will serve as a host for meetings of the committees and other working groups of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), OASIS, ANSI, and W3C – groups responsible for the development and maintenance of structured information standards, XML, SGML, and their derivatives. www.IDEAlliance.org
Arbortext, Inc., announced that Epic 3.0 and Adept 9.0, now support key Web standards aimed at easing customer and third-party developer efforts and maintaining interoperability with other key software platforms. In addition to extended Java support, Epic and Adept now support XSL, XSLT, DOM and COM standards. Combined with support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and additional scripting languages, these new standards offer Epic and Adept users a wide new range of interoperability options for developing XML-based e-Content. In addition, Arbortext software can now run as COM servers to provide Windows applications access to the DOM. This allows Windows programmers to write document-processing applications in Visual Basic, C, C++ and Java. With these new releases, developers on Windows can now write programs in Java that call, or are called by, Arbortext Command Language (ACL) scripts. Arbortext supports XSLT for those customers who have complex electronic publishing requirements that require the transformation of multiple types of tag sets. For customers who want to continue to use their existing stylesheets for their electronic publishing needs, Arbortext will continue to support them in both Epic and Adept. Arbortext uses CSS in the published output for the Web. CSS allows users to customize the display of HTML in a Web browser without having to edit transformation stylesheets. Arbortext also announced that in upcoming releases, it plans to support additional scripting languages such as Perl, TCL, Python and Microsoft scripting languages. Support for these scripting languages will provide another option to programmers who write document-processing functions. Pricing for Epic 3.0 and Adept 9.0 varies, depending on number of seats purchased, type of licensing, and number of modules. Epic 3.0 and Adept 9.0 will be available Dec. 15. www.arbortext.com
Interwoven, Inc. launched TeamSite 4.0, the latest version of its product. With a range of new features, TeamSite 4.0 builds on Interwoven
Subscribe to the Gilbane Advisor
